Page 22 of Dragon's Captive

When he knots me for what feels like the hundredth time in three days, his seed filling me to the point of visible swelling in my abdomen, I realize with horror that I've stopped fighting entirely. My hands clutch at him now, nails digging into scaled shoulders as I urge him deeper. My hips rise to meet each thrust, seeking rather than avoiding the invasion. My voice—traitor that it is—begs for his knot, for his release, for the claiming my body craves with increasing desperation.

"Please," I hear myself whimpering as he teases me with shallow thrusts, deliberately withholding the depth I've come to need. "Please, deeper."

His smile is predatory, triumphant. "Say it properly. Tell me what you need."

I should refuse. Should reclaim some shred of dignity. Instead, heat overrides pride with brutal efficiency.

"Your knot," I gasp, shame burning through me even as the words tumble out. "I need your knot. Need you to fill me. Please."

His reward is immediate and devastating—a brutal thrust that seats him fully inside me, both shafts driving to depths that make coherent thought impossible. His pace turns punishing, each drive of his hips jolting my entire body with its force.

"Good girl," he praises, voice rough with rut. "Perfect little omega, begging so sweetly for alpha shafts."

When his knots finally swell, locking us together, the physical evidence of my surrender is unmistakable—my body arching into his touch without conscious permission, accepting his claim with the omega submission I've spent a decade denying existed within me.

"Beautiful," Kairyx murmurs, one hand splayed possessively over my slightly rounded belly where his seed remains trapped inside me. "You were made for this. Made to be claimed. Made to be bred."

The words should trigger revulsion, resistance, rage at being reduced to biological function. Instead, my inner walls clench around his knots in response, milking the last pulses of his release as pleasure ripples through me in gentler waves. My body responds to his praise with another small, rippling climax that draws a pleased rumble from his chest.

"That's it," he encourages, grinding against me to intensify the sensation. "Take every drop."

This is what terrifies me most—not the claiming itself, not even the physical adaptation to his inhuman anatomy, but my growing responsiveness to both his touch and his possessive words. The way my body has learned to crave not just the physical relief of claiming, but his specific brand of dominance—the commanding growl, the possessive grip, the praise whenI surrender completely. As if some part of me is awakening to possibilities I never allowed myself to consider.

"This isn't me," I whisper, more to myself than to him. "This is just biology. Chemicals. It isn't real."

His scaled hand tips my chin up, forcing me to meet his golden gaze. "Everything about this is real, Clara," he says, voice gentler than I've heard it before. "Including your response to me. Especially that."

I turn my face away, unable to bear the certainty in his eyes. He allows it, settling us more comfortably against the pillows as we wait for his knots to subside enough for separation. His wings partially unfurl to wrap around us both, creating a cocoon of scaled warmth that shouldn't feel as safe as it does.

In these quiet moments between heat waves, confusion reigns. My body hums with satisfaction while my mind struggles to maintain boundaries that matter less with each claiming. The woman I was—independent, defiant, master of her own fate—seems increasingly distant, a fading memory replaced by this new reality of biological surrender.

Is this how it happens? How resistance crumbles, how captivity becomes choice? Not in one dramatic moment but in gradual erosion, biology overriding principle until submission feels like destiny rather than defeat?

The thought terrifies me more than anything Kairyx could do to my body. Because if I lose myself in this—in him—what remains of Clara Winters at all?

Sleep claims me before I can follow this dangerous line of thinking further, my exhausted body surrendering to unconsciousness with the same eagerness it surrenders to everything else now. The last sensation I register is Kairyx's heartbeat against my back, steady and strong, his wings creating a fortress of scaled protection around my smaller form.

And in sleep, I dream not of escape, not of resistance, but of belonging—a treacherous whisper from my omega hindbrain that I'll have to face when I wake.

If anything of my original self remains by then.

CHAPTER 10

AFTERMATH

The switchfrom heat to normal happens without warning or ceremony. One moment I'm burning from the inside out, desperate for alpha touch despite myself; the next, I wake to blessed clarity, the hormone fog lifting like a nasty hangover.

And like any hangover, it leaves a mess in its wake.

I take stock of the damage with cold precision, trying to distance myself from what my body has been through—and enjoyed—over the past four days. Bruises dot my hips and thighs in the unmistakable pattern of clawed fingers. My legs ache with a deep soreness that flares into actual pain when I move. Even the silky sheets feel rough against my oversensitive skin.

But the most telling evidence sits at the junction of my neck and shoulder—a claiming bite. Still raw, still healing, but already forming the scar that will mark me as his for the rest of my life. My fingers trace the indentations, each puncture from Kairyx's inhuman teeth a permanent record of the moment biology steamrolled my principles.

Omega. Claimed. His.

I should be planning an escape. Plotting resistance. Doing something, anything to reclaim the identity I built over a decade of careful deception. Instead, I lie still, my body too exhaustedfor action while my mind cycles through jumbled memories of the past days—pleasure I never wanted to feel, surrender I swore would never happen, need that devoured rational thought with terrifying speed.

"You're awake."

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